Dear Ragnar,
Excuse me while I turn my collar around and play Fr. Gary. No guarantees since I never got beyond my Senior Religion Class in High School.
The morality issue depends on how dire your situation is. Generally speaking, taking a government subsidy is a form of stealing and immoral. In fact it is worse than stealing since it is corrupting the institution which is supposed to be protecting people from theft into an instrument of theft. But even St. Thomas Aquinas allowed stealing a loaf of bread if you are starving. In the modern interventionist mega-state it is often impossible to even survive without having to use improperly government-financed means.
After six years of intense job hunting during which our governor and legislature here in the “Peepuls Republick of Meesheegun” raised business taxes from 100% to 700% in only one case of gross irresponsibility and malfeasance, I finally broke down last month and applied for food stamps albeit not without feelings of guilt and hypocrisy. But there was no choice left. (Which should also alert you I am not a completely disinterested party.)
The fact is, for most people an education is ruled out in modern society without attending public schools and/or universities. Retirement is impossible without Social Security. Dealing with illness impossible without using Medicaid. Travel impossible without using government highways and airports. Or doing one’s natural duties without using the government water and sewage system. Even if you could find private means, you have been taxed so heavily you very likely lack the resources to obtain them.
That is why socialism and interventionism are so fundamentally evil: it makes thieves of us all–whether willing or not.
So, if you think you can get along without it, by all means do. But if you can’t, don’t kill yourself with guilt. Just work (and pray) for reform.
The one good thing about the Obama misadministration is that it is re-uniting the disperate parts of the libertarian-conservative-“religious right” coalition that had fallen into lethargy and squabbling since the beginning of the Reagan administration. It seemed once Reagan was elected, everyone in the movement took the attitude, “Reform and restoration has begun. There can only be improvement from now on.” We all ought to have known better. As Albert Jay Nock said, “There is no such thing as a lost cause because there is no such thing as a won cause.” The leftists being clever at power games even if stupid on economics, just waited for the right opportunities. But we can play the same game and better. But we have to start grappling with our most fundamental tactical problem communications. Press, pulpit, and pedagogy are controlled by the left. So our most important efforts as a movement must be in communication–happily happening in the blogs–and discrediting the leftist priests, ministers, reporters, and teachers at every turn.
Back to moral issues, we must fight the silly moral paradigm of selfish-unselfish. This is the fundamental moral paradigm of the left and meshes well with their inability to understand the notions of harmony of peaceful self-interest and spontaneous social order as it gives justification to obedience to the “Great Noble Holy Perfect Leader” who is supposed to somehow have a charism of wisdom and virtue giving him the right to rule all people in all things. And whom, of course, they must obey for to use you own judgment is selfish.
In reality the selfish-unselfish paradigm begs every substantive moral question.
To the leftist (as I found out from no less a teacher than Dr. Benjamin Spock) whatever advances “progress” viz. socialism, is moral, whatever does not is immoral. That is, whatever advances the absolute rule of the self-proclaimed Great Noble Holy Perfect Leader is moral and whatever is against it is selfish and, therefore, immoral. In the case of Spock’s lecture (the date is easy to remember, my 21st birthday, April 22, 1971) the efforts (whether wrongheaded or not) by the U.S. to help the South Vietnamese defend themselves was immoral since it was against a “progressive” regime, while the deliberate tortures and murders carried out first by the Viet Cong and then by the North Vietnamese Army were moral. For example the deliberate murders of everyone in Duc duc village. Hanging the pregnat wives of villagers who didn’t cooperate with the communists by the hands and arms while cutting out the baby–before finally killing the woman. And all the other kindly, gentle, and compassionate things communists are noted for. Dr. Spock decried the immorality of the violence of the military efforts by the U.S. and South Vietnamese to defend against the Communists while bragging about his role in organizing a protest at Harvard in such a way it resulted in violence.
This relativistic morality must be rejected by the libertarian and anyone with any sense of the objective nature of reality and truth. “Truth is,” as St. Thomas Aquinas said, “the adequacy with which the intellect perceives the thing.” (Adequatio rei et intellectus.) Thus there are and must be objective moral rules as there are objective moral consequences. The chief and most fundamental example being the Ten Commandments.
Even though they should be applied with reason, mercy, and a proper sense of balance and proportion, nonetheless, they are the objective rules because choice and acts have objective consequences. Ignorance or unfortunate circumstances can mitigate the guilt but not the harm.
I hope this helps. Best wishes.
Sincerely,
Gary J. Mallast